Heroic raiding. If you haven't got 14/14HC you can't talk shit about how difficult it is. FACT

There never has been in WoW, the end game of PVE is not dungeons, it is raiding. FACT

Raiding has always been about grinding, Hence gear treadmill, the only thing that is changed is that there is more options now. If LFR is too easy move to flex if flex is too easy move to norm, if norm is too easy move to HC. FACT

Apples ≠ Oranges. FACT

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But if you also raided from the start to finish of an expansion then it wouldn't matter if that was the case.

You seem to keep getting caught up on what other people are doing to play the game when you should be worried about yourself.

Well said on all counts. And yeah, that last line seems to be the big issue raid finder haters have. Heaven forbid others have fun.

you would be completely wrong. I guess it's pointless to argue with you further if you're basing your arguments on incorrect assumptions.

Why don't you go ahead and link us your armory, sport?

Are you trolling? I have made ZERO complaints about difficulty. I even explicitly said the difficulty was comparable. The whole argument I'm making over and over is about linear progression. How can you possibly fail this badly at reading comprehension?

"BC raiding was more enjoyable because you had to clear the last tier before you did the next tier"

How to fix it?

I agree with you on almost everything.

Originally Posted by newlineGet

How do we fix this? Honestly at this point, it's hard to say if we can fix this. Look at Cata's heroics for instance. They were probably the closest you can get to vanilla/tbc dungeons, and what happened? QQ shitstorm everywhere. The game has has just changed too much to back to where we started. So the only thing I deem possible - a vanilla server. Look at it as more of a test, to see which way the game is actually better off and what do people enjoy more.

I have an Idea about how to fix it. It's gonna take some bravery.
First off, it can't be a hard cut, it has to be relatively gradual. Step 1: make level 91 mobs a little tough. We're talking get you to half health if you're wearing greens tough.Step 2: Make level 93+ mobs real tough. I'm talking about giving them abilities that stack. Say you have three enemies in a pack. Two of them debuff you against poison damage and the third one(with extra health so u dont just burn it down) has heavy poison damage, non-interruptable. so You have to use cc while questing. and taking on more than 2 mobs at a time is really tough. 4+ is almost assured suicide. This forces players to re-learn how to play. And we do it gradually, so its not off-putting.Step 3: Have end-game dungeons and heroic dungeons. Make end game dungeons as hard as heroics were in wotlk. Make heroics legitimately challenging for people in all blues from normal max level dungeons. Make the achievements for siad dungeons grant you titles and sparkle ponies and only be doable in full epic raiding gear. Dungeons are the core of the Wow experience for most players. Hard, challenging, engaging dungeons are what they want. Make some harder than others, of course, and make those drop weapons.Step 4: Make epics rarer. You get to max level Cool. Start working on your first set of blues. Have non-set pieces dropped from every boss in dungeons. Have set pieces be 4 ilevels higher and dropped from end bosses of dungeons. Then have a shared rep that you can grind from any dungeon. Have that reward heroic level blues. Have the heroic drop heroic blues, and the end bosses drop an item that you can turn in 8-10 or so of + like 100 of trade resource(metal,herbs,cloth, etc) for an epic piece or for sparkle pony rewards. This adds a diverse set of rewards to dungeons and heroic dungeons and ensure that raiders will run heroics occasionally and help out the inexperienced players.Step 5: raiding. The first boss should be tuned to killable after a few hours if your team is in full heroic blues. Main issue should be dodging mechanics or a kill order to figure out, possibly a consumable found by clearing trash a little out of the way debuffs the boss slightly. Second boss should be a dps check of some sort. It shouldn't be terribly difficult. Doable in full heroic gear, but only barely. all other bosses should be tuned to where the average raiders get to progress at about a boss a week if they don't make silly mistakes, and you get some epics from the previous bosses + heroic rewards. This will lead to much slower progression, yes. But also, a feeling of accomplishment. Also, bosses should not be loot pinatas. Two items drop for 10 man, and 5-6 from 25 man. But make the bosses also drop a collectible item. After Bracers buyable for 4, shoulders, helm chest for 10, weapon for 12, and all else for 8 or so. And make these 4 ilevels below dropable gear.Step 6: Get rid of LFR. It's only redeemable feature was making it super easy to see the content so you could play wow without any investment,s ee the bosses, and log out till next patch. It's a suicide pill for your game. Ax it.Step 7: Timey wimey fluctuations mean you cannot bring your flying mounts with you into the past and use them in draenor. You will be rinding ground based steeds, and will no longer be able to ignore content on the ground, which is like half of the game. The world is more immersive and fun when you actually have to traverse it and explore it.Step 8: Give 5 man world bosses that drop a mcguffin that is needed by raiders. perhaps an item that is required to make end game crafting gear.Step 9: make side bosses in raids. Make them drop plans for crafting. Make these dropped plans better than 90% of what you can get in the raid. Make it take items dropped from all the bosses( if there's 8 raid bosses, make it take 8 raid items) make it take like 5 world boss crafting items, and make it take like 60+ gatherable crafting mats. Make it like a belt or boots or something. And make it BOE.Step 10: Take away all the dang self healing in pvp. Make non healers's heals heal for less in combat. Give stamina like twice the budget you ever gave it before. This makes fights longer for dps classes, and give the chance for skill to matter more. Also on healing. Make healers heal for about the same as a normal player can dps. If they are spamming heals sitting still, a few stuns and a mortal strike style debuff should be dead after about 30 secs. Also, we have dual spec. healers do not need to be able to dps. Arenas: add in more buffs. Put them in areas you don't normall go. Have them do like 20% less damage taken, or 20% more damage done. Adds an element of strategy. Do I save my cc for when the buff spawns, or blow it now and try to get a kill?

These alone would make the game badass. perhaps the best expansion yet. Oh, and bring back some of them server wide pve things. Like AQ or Isle of quel'danas. Something we all work towards and different servers complete at different speeds.

Are you trolling? I have made ZERO complaints about difficulty. I even explicitly said the difficulty was comparable. The whole argument I'm making over and over is about linear progression. How can you possibly fail this badly at reading comprehension?

You complained about the multiple raid difficulties. You have a short memory.

How do we fix this? Honestly at this point, it's hard to say if we can fix this. Look at Cata's heroics for instance. They were probably the closest you can get to vanilla/tbc dungeons, and what happened? QQ shitstorm everywhere. The game has has just changed too much to back to where we started. So the only thing I deem possible - a vanilla server. Look at it as more of a test, to see which way the game is actually better off and what do people enjoy more.

Do you really want to go back to vanilla? Offcourse vanilla felt epic cause when you never ever thouched an mmo and started your first char i took you forever to level to 60 and thinking back you find was the best experience ever compared to now. But think about the other side of the medal, travel 45-60 minutes for just 5% experience. Dying 20 minutes on one quest, cause you didnt used the correct spells or your gear isnt high enough to just to complete that one quest. Hitting level 40 and realizing you dont have enough gold to buy your mount.

Have a full actionbar filled with lesser healing rank 1 to 6 and greater healing from rank 1 to 6 and during a raid/dungeon you had to determe what spell should i use to not get oom in your current gear. Starting a 40 man raid took you one hour to form and get all 40 people to the instance fully buffed with food etc... and realizing 4 of them didnt have correct gear with them and need to go back to town or change their talents or the 1 person that just pulled whatever he wanted. 25 people hardly know the tactics of the fight.

Im not saying vanilla was complete shit! The social aspect of the game was so good i want it back. Starting a dungeon with 5-10 other random people and end up with adding 2 to your friendlist because you felt they were good and so you formed a personal friendlist with people you liked and where you can count on to do dungeons and raids to have the best possible experience. But people tend to forget from where we come and how the game evolved in a good or bad way.

P.S: fastest character to level from 1-60 took roughly 5 days. If you play 2 hours a day it would take you 60 actuall days to reach level 60

I wouldn't call logging in 2 hours per reset to do LFR is exactly grindy or even a gameplay experience at that.
Yes, I don't have to run LFR I can just do dungeons(see the mind numbing part). But it'll still feel incomplete, because while I'm doing these dungeons, mindlessly aoe'ing packs and killing these easy bosses, I can see other people just get free gear from timeless isle/lfr. That kills the progression aspect.

2 hours a week on LFR? Yeah okay. Reason I do not do LFR because clearing all 4 wings of SoO takes way longer than it does the clear it on normal.

If you are a fresh 90 and want to get into heroic raiding, you have a shitton of grinding to do.
1#must grind all wings of LFR from every tier for legendary cloak for 2-3 month which will take you much much longer than 2 hours per week.
2#Must grind all wings of flex for gear upgrades every week.
3#Spend countless hours on timeless isle grinding for epics.
4#Try to find normal pugs every week and any pieces you do not get, you must grind flex and LFR.
5# Spend a few hours grinding Black Prince rep for legendary.
6# Spending an hour or 2 doing all the Isle of Thunder solo scenarios for legendary.
#7 repeat for any alts you want to gear up.

If you want any nice titles/mounts/achievements then you have even more grinding to do.

A lot fo the problems with vanilla were with the inexperience of the playerbase back then.The playerbase has matured substantially since then. Having a vanilla or bc style expansion would probably be amazing. In order to have social interaction, you have to have a need for it. That means you will lose some convenience. As it stands, they have removed the other players from the game and put you on training wheels.

1. If the thread is beating a dead horse, maybe you shouldn't start it or post this in an already existing thread.
2. "Possible fixes"? Don't fix it if it isn't broken.

Group quests were also known as "invite your high level friend and get free awesome gear", good thing they got rid of that.

Can I ask you what spec you were playing if you didn't have life-tap on your bars?
Because my heirloom-geared Demonology alt goes out of mana quickly while leveling.

All I see is one big rant about linearity and the removal of group-quests. What does that have to do with difficulty?
And do you call it difficult because you have to find a class trainer because your abilities are 10 levels behind the zone you are running?
If you really want to get into that "Classic feeling", you could just ask a random thug to break your mouse-arm. That's the same 'Classic feeling'.

"Nowadays, you can realistically, after you hit max level just go to the AH, buy a couple of pieces to raise your iLvl , go do LFR and you're set. Damn."
Really? Are you serious on that?

"You doing LFR means, that you already fought the bosses, saw their mechanics, dialogues, lore in the LFR."
Simple solution: DO NOT DO LFR!
Why are people so blind to that simple solution to ALL of your problems? It's no freaking rocket science!
You don't hit yourself on the head and then complain that the hammer hurts, this is exactly the same!

Funny how you said if it isin't broken don't fix it. The way everything worked in vanilla, tbc, wrath was fine and the game was growing. Didn't seem like it needed fixing.

Group quests are what you make of them. Sure, you could invite a higher level to kill the mob for you. You could do the same thing with dungeons. It isin't that though, it's about the leveling experience and choices.

I leveled as a non BoA demo lock, mass pulling everything. And yes, I did not have life tap on my bars the whole way through. The new HP/MP regen is enough to keep you from stopping to think until you have the gear to avoid this problem.

"All I see is one big rant about linearity and the removal of group-quests. What does that have to do with difficulty?". Nothing, it's about dullness.

"Really? Are you serious on that?". Yes I am. Me and many other people have done it.

"Do you want to know my TBC path?". If you ran those heroics at the end of the exp, with overgeared people then yea, that path might be possible. Even then, your described path looks more complex and time consuming than the current model.

"Simple solution: DO NOT DO LFR!". Sure. I can run those overdumbed heroics instead for 20 minutes each. Fine. Won't take much effort nor will it consume much time, will only have me less geared.

Very good post, I must say I totally agree. People who whine and say "oh go play something else", why should he? He obviously still love this game for what it once was and hates to see it ruined. Wow has been around for such a long time and people have built a relation to it that they won't give up without a fight. I love the world of Warcraft for what it once was, I love the Warcraft universe and it is my favorite game of all time, I won't give up trying to restore it to its former glory until the last server is shut down.

There is a reason TBC was the most popular expansion, you actually had to play the game back then, you had always had something to look forward to. Now? The only thing there is to look forward to is that someday the game will be as challenging as it was during the golden days.

I love when casuals say this game is "easy"
Sorry, where are you in terms of Heroic progression and racing for world firsts?
Oh nowhere.
People who claim it's easy take months to get anywhere in progress and stick with LFR/Now flex.
Of course it's "easy" that's what those are there for. For casuals.

Funny how you said if it isin't broken don't fix it. The way everything worked in vanilla, tbc, wrath was fine and the game was growing. Didn't seem like it needed fixing.

You're kidding yourself if you think everything was fine in vanilla and tbc. Wrath was when Blizzard started to make the game easier for "casual" players and it was the peak of subscriptions by making raids more easily accessible, making leveling a breeze etc.

You're kidding yourself if you think everything was fine in vanilla and tbc. Wrath was when Blizzard started to make the game easier for "casual" players and it was the peak of subscriptions by making raids more easily accessible, making leveling a breeze etc.

Not saying EVERYTHING was fine, just a lot.
About the growing part. It was already growing all the way up to wrath. Uncoincidentaly, end of wrath -> cata was when it started dropping aswell.

I agree on most points. There have been a lot of very good new features in the game in the past few years, but the difficulty drop (outside raiding/Challenge modes) and linearity killed it for me. I think the worst part is that there is literally nothing even remotely challenging until you hit lvl90.

pretty horrible. Now I know that I'm just beating a dead horse here, and that this has been discussed a million of times, but what the hell, seems to be the go to topic nowadays, so I guess I'll drop my views on the problem and possible fixes to them.

Now that we got that out of the way we can discuss the main two problems of todays WoW: Progression and difficulty.

Let's start of with the difficulty part, because it will eventually lead up to the problem with todays progression. Now I know a lot of you will think I'm going to rant about how easy raiding is now a days, but the difficulty that I am referring to isin't related to raiding at all. It's rather related to the overall experience of the game. Leveling, grouping and ESPECIALLY the dungeon difficulty.
I'm going to refer to the following thread : eu.battle.n.et/wow/en/forum/topic/8427632869. It explains everything pretty well, but let's touch on what I think really makes the game mind numbing and unbearable.

First off the leveling.. what a load of bull. About 2 months ago I tried to relevel a couple characters to expand my class pool and to also try out monk. Trust me, I have never, never, felt so mind numbed before. Mind you I leveled one character with BoA gear and the other without, and it doesn't make too much of a difference, except that in one scenario you kill your brain cells for longer, and in the other, a bit less. The problem is, that everything is literally spoon fed. And I mean it. Quests? Boring as fuck. Everything is shown and extremely linear. I honestly, don't understand why people enjoy the new "flow" of quests. In pandaria, you just follow a set path or chains that just lead you from one place to another. I hate that they have done this to vanilla content as well, because honestly, I found wayyyy more enjoyable to sidetrack, search for different quest hubs, new places. Add up the fact that you now get abilities automatically when you level, and you have yourself with a brain mush deluxe - just run from one place to the other aka follow this linear path until you're 90. Group quests? Why the hell were they removed? It was always fun and exciting to see that quest that would give you blue gear, more gold, and more experience in exchange for a bit of effort. You could say that it broke the numbness of linearity and let you try something else - try to take on the challenge and solo 5 man quest alone(which I loved) or take a break and find some people to take on the quest. Either way it spiced things up a lot. The difficulty? Don't even want to comment that. It's just a mass pull fest with overdumbed mechanics now. Want to guess how many times I life tapped or stopped to drink on my warlock from 1-90? Yea that's right, zero(actually, I didn't have life tap on my bars).

Dungeons(I felt like this needed it's own space)? Oh my fucking god, what have they done? Dungeons used to be meaningful , fun, challenging and a key into the actual endgame. What are they now? Useless and boring. They are now just mass aoe fest, with a straight patern, easy bosses and overall useless(not only the normals, but also heroics). Nowadays, you can realistically, after you hit max level just go to the AH, buy a couple of pieces to raise your iLvl , go do LFR and you're set. Damn.

Now that we got most of those points out of the way we can move to the biggest problem: progression. Now this is a big one and honestly the one that has killed WoW for me the past 2 expansions, it's the progression or lack of it.

I know how much people hate when other put on the "nostalgia glasses", but let me try to give prime examples here for a second.

Vanilla - TBC - Wrath(possibly) : Okay, so at least for me, these were the expansions that I found myself logging on every day for the longest hours until the end of the expansion. Why you might ask? Because I felt an actual sense of progression, difficulty, fun and rewards. Back in TBC, after I hit level 70 on new alts I felt like I had a clear path - to get into Black temple/Sunwell/Kara(you name it). How did I achieve it? By baby steps. Hit 70 -> get all the possible best quest/rep gear(possibly buy something from AH) -> run normals until properly geared - > onto heroics -> get attuned -> run previous raids to get the latest possible gear before I stepped into the current tier. And all this while keeping me entertained also helped me find new people(no dungeon finder), and finally after so much effort help me reach the goal : to see the current tier, it's bosses, mechanics.

Cataclysm - Pandaria(mainly pandaria): The game in it's current state doesn't have me coming back for more than a couple of months maximum. Why? I'ts cause I can't find anything to fill my time in terms of meaningful progression. This is what is done on new alts today: Hit 90 - > get a couple of pieces for iLvl requirement - > LFR - > Loot shower - > eventually make way into heroics. Yes, it's that sad. With this type of gameplay I can't imagine myself spending more than 2-3 hours actually doing something meaningful in the game. All of this is done in an automized sense(LFR, dungeon finder, etc.) which makes the process even quicker thus making the game less of a time sink.

This sort of progression also makes the game EXTREMELY bland. You doing LFR means, that you already fought the bosses, saw their mechanics, dialogues, lore in the LFR. Do you really enjoy repeating it in normal/heroic just for those +10-20 iLvl's? I know that me, personally, would much prefer to have a carrot on a stick thrown at me, so I progress in a way that makes me reach my final goal in a climax. Reaching the final tier is the climax of doing dungeons/attunements/previous tiers, and is honestly always been the best reward.

Think about it for a second. What do you prefer? Hitting 90 and heading straight into LFR, getting the gear and possibly continuing into normals/heroics? Or would you rather break down your game into chunks that kept you occupied for a longer period of time, thus removing the "I'll resubscribe when new patch comes out" scenario, because you'll actually have something to do until the new patch hits. I find it funny that people blame Blizzard for not producing content fast enough, when in reality, there's more content than ever, just that half of it is useless or just done too quickly.

The game isin't dying because it's too hard/easy/aged. It's dying because of what it has become. A quick express that takes you no longer than a couple of days.

How do we fix this? Honestly at this point, it's hard to say if we can fix this. Look at Cata's heroics for instance. They were probably the closest you can get to vanilla/tbc dungeons, and what happened? QQ shitstorm everywhere. The game has has just changed too much to back to where we started. So the only thing I deem possible - a vanilla server. Look at it as more of a test, to see which way the game is actually better off and what do people enjoy more.

There are also other problems like class homogenization, reducing social interaction and others that I could touch upon, but the post is already too long, and probably half the people won't bother reading it anyway.

TL;DR: Games too quick,bland, easy thus leaving people with nothing to do, but to unsubscribe and wait for next patch, cause they are already done with the previous one in a week.

Thanks for your time and welcome to thread 9798789 discussing this topic.

MMOS in comparison are shit, especially all the F2P ones, I tried like 90% of the F2P ones and they suck dicks, I will agree if you played WoW for more than 5 years, or like me have more than 365 days played across all my characters over a span of almost 10 years it can get boring. Just don't play it, you want WoW to be something it can't and will never be because you love the feel of it. Just take the fond memories you have for it and be done.

I feel absolutely nothing when killing bosses now. Comparatively, of course. I just check if they dropped good loot and enjoy the good time with guildies, but no emotions at all about beating the game itself.

Something like that should be expected by anybody who's been playing the game for a few years though. Let's all face it. Those of us who've played for a long time have killed countless bosses and we're pretty much over it.

I agree 100% with everything the OP said and I don't know how Blizzard can fix this now. Even stuff like Transmog and Flying Mounts I feel dampened the experience for me.

Everything is easy, everything is picked for you, and everything is broken.

problem is if Blizzard backtracks and tries to make the experience like WotLK and before, people will QQ like no other and whine about it. Who plays a game that doesn't feel rewarding in any way and when blizzard tries to challenge you whines that they would rather get everything for free?

If Blizzard backtracks, it will cleanse the game of the stupidity and whiny brats and bring back all the true hardcore WoW fans that loved this game before Cata. Which I think would make the game healthier overall. sure, maybe less subs, but at least its healthy... If blizzard keeps following this path WoW will eventually just become a empty husk instead of dropping subs in a healthy way all the people who loved wow will stick with it until the end if Blizzard returns to their ways.

I agree 100% with everything the OP said and I don't know how Blizzard can fix this now. Even stuff like Transmog and Flying Mounts I feel dampened the experience for me.

Everything is easy, everything is picked for you, and everything is broken.

problem is if Blizzard backtracks and tries to make the experience like WotLK and before, people will QQ like no other and whine about it. Who plays a game that doesn't feel rewarding in any way and when blizzard tries to challenge you whines that they would rather get everything for free?

If Blizzard backtracks, it will cleanse the game of the stupidity and whiny brats and bring back all the true hardcore WoW fans that loved this game before Cata. Which I think would make the game healthier overall. sure, maybe less subs, but at least its healthy... If blizzard keeps following this path WoW will eventually just become a empty husk instead of dropping subs in a healthy way all the people who loved wow will stick with it until the end if Blizzard returns to their ways.

Just my two cents.

Sounds like the only whiny brats are the ones who think this way. Love the statement about making the experience like WotLK. You do realize that WotLK was probably the easiest expansion ever right? Talk about getting everything for free, WotLK was that expansion!